QuestEon

I have only dabbled in Molyneux, so what I am about to say might be off. In what I did look at, I have noticed a striking omission in his parent-bashing stuff and in the online discussions of it: what about love?...

...I am so glad I didn't encounter a Molyneux back then. My story isn't perfect, but it is mine. Even though my love for my parents diminished, the part that remained stayed strong. And it's good to love your parents...

...But Molyneux is doing the full number on some young folks. If he only knew how much his memory will be hated later on by those who lose it all...

Michael,

Your story was very moving to me. My relationship with my parents is garden-variety at best. Fought like crazy at 18, agreed to disagree somewhere in my mid-twenties, now all is well and we are close.

Answering your question about Molyneux and love isn't easy. But I'll give it a shot.

There's some background about Molyneux that will probably set off all kinds of alarms for a trained psychologist like Sharon. He was born in Ireland and his parents divorced when he was an infant. His father was a successful academic who spent most of his career in Africa. So Stefan had minimal contact with him. Stefan and his brother were left with a mother who, according to Stefan, suffered from mental illness.

Both Stefan and his brother were sent to boarding school at a young age. When he was a little older, his mother moved the small family to Canada. However, she needed surgery for some reason and went back to Europe for both the surgery and recovery. Stefan was 12 at the time. She stayed there for the summer. During that time, Stefan's brother was sent back to live his aunt and cousins, where he stayed there for two years. Stefan was basically left behind in Canada--sent to stay with family friends he barely knew. When Stefan's mother returned, her mental state deteriorated to the point that she was briefly admitted to Clark Hospital (at the time a psychiatric hospital in Toronto). The rest of the time, she was home with only Stefan to care for her. Stefan's brother came home when Stefan was in his early teens. Stefan claims he and his brother "threw his mother out of the house" when he was 15.

Stefan grew up separated from both parents, never forming attachments of any kind to either of them, and blaming them both for everything wrong in his life.

I think would be impossible for him to comprehend your story. I suspect he lacks the empathy to connect with the depth of your experience.

Molyneux has been flailing away at trying to describe/define love ever since, partly because he tries to define love via logic and partly because he has a curious binary way of looking at human behavior.

His shortest definition is this: "Love is our involuntary response to virtue."

Because he is speaking primarily to a young audience, he uses that phrase to convince them that they don't love their parents (no matter what they currently think) and would be unable to love them unless those parents were perfectly virtuous. (And by "perfectly virtuous," he means fully invested in his philosophy of atheist anarchocapitalism.)

In his Podcast #729 (Your Children Do Not Love You), he lays out his argument. Note that although the title and the content of the podcast appear to be directed toward parents, it is not. Despite appearances, this podcast is Molyneux telling his flock why they do not really love their parents.

Fasten your seatbelts.

6:27 Let me tell parents something--if you are listening to this and you have young children or you are pregnant or you are thinking of reproducing--let me tell you something that is the most important thing in terms of philosophy that you will ever, ever, ever hear. You do not have children so they will love you. You do not give birth to children to feel love.

Children do not love you. Children, your children, do not love you. Where there is such a disparity of power, there is no possibility--not even the slightest shred of possibility--that you can be loved. Where there is such a disparity of power and dependence there cannot be love. And that is fine. And that is good. And that is right. And that is exactly as it should be.

God cannot love humanity, except in a pitying, superior kind of way. The idea that a God creates humanity in order to be worshiped is the foundational mythology of parenting--that we have children in order to be worshiped. That we have children in order to be loved. This is so basic to parenting. This IS parenting and always has been and must not be in the future. It must not be in the future.

...where there is hierarchy, there cannot be love.

13:33 Your children attach to you the way a little duck imprints upon a mother duck. The way that a rock falls to the earth. The rock does not fall to the earth because it loves the earth and cannot bear to be away from it and kisses it when it lands. The rock falls to the earth because that's what rocks do in the presence of gravity. Children bond with their parents as best as they can because that's what children do based on attachment theory. Children will attach to their parents by any means whatsoever. And people and parents throughout history the world over and--not for long, I hope--mistake this attachment for love.

15:12 When children attach to parents, parents feel that--after a life in a desert--they finally have been given all they want to drink. And they greedily drain their children dry. Because attachment from children is like reward without effort. It is like love without the need to be virtuous. It is the most dangerous drug in the world. It is the most dangerous drug in the world--to imagine that your children love you when they are young. They don't. They can't.

Molyneux's argument is that children are not able to "decide" whether they love their parents until they are old enough to understand virtue and evaluate the virtue of their parents. Until then, it's all just imprinting.

I always do these long quotes so people can make their own minds up about Molyneux. Personally, what I see is a tragic outpouring from a man who has no clue why people have babies, nor any true understanding of child-parental love, nor any real understanding of child development. (He made this podcast prior to his own wife's pregnancy. However, I'm certain he would tell you that everything with his parent-child relationship is different because they live in a virtuous home governed by ethics.)

Anyway, that's all I got for now.

Q.E.

To all--I still have concerns that I'm hijacking this thread. Is so, please let me know and I'll zip it!

To John, hiya! I'll be glad to try to answer your questions, although some of them may be based on mistaken premises.

To QuestEon: (EDIT: deleted "and Molyneux-detractors" to stress that I'm curious about QuestEons opinion in particular)

I just re-read An Essay by Stefan Molyneux, the last time I read that was some time ago.

Just remember, for the record, what you linked to was the portion of his essay that I included in this article. My article does link to his entire essay, however. The Digital Ethnography guys just sloppily copied and pasted from my article to theirs.

I'm wondering where Molyneux-atagonism comes from: His demeanor (about which I know next to nothing first-handed) or his opinion about the sick nature of modern family realationships.

If it's the former, it might help to make it more clear what the criticism really is. If Molyneux is simply a domineering bully, it would be beneficial to separate this accusation from his message.

If it's the latter, I largely agree with Molyneux (on the family issues, not on his libertarianism). I don't have a very strong opinion on Molyneux personally and even less on his community - but the contents of this article strike me as a very likely description of how parent-offspring relationships very often are.

(bold/italics mine)

Very often? What does that mean? Usually? Thirty percent of the time?

I know you weren't trying to do this but it is within the indefinite spaces of phrases like "very often" that Molyneux is able to deliver one message to his internal followers and another to the outside world. However, I pay attention to the specific language Molyneux uses with his followers. In fact, he closes the essay in question by saying "nearly all parents are horribly bad." That's not very often--that's close to 100%! And he wasn't just going for effect, either. I have offered consistent, pervasive corroboration that Molyneux believes nearly everyone has been badly raised. Further, he says there is no way one's parents can ever make amends for it.

In addition, in Molyneux podcasts--which I quote extensively on my site--he specifically says you were badly raised even if you don't believe it.

For example, try this one:

From Podcast #211 (Childhood Prisons):

28:50…Our childhoods—our collective childhoods were prisons. And I know I’m going to get even more emails about this…’Oh, I had a good relationship with my mom and dad.’ ‘Oh, they were fine.’ ‘They were this’ and ‘They were that’…

No. I’m sorry. I gotta tell you, and I hate to say it because I don’t mean to be a bully, but you’re wrong.

FreeDomain Radio is a constant, non-stop persuasion that your parents were bad.

In particular, children are told that they should keep relationship with their parents for reasons other than their personal benefit: It is considered normal/moral/decent. I don't think I'm the only one who wasted quite a large amount of time and energy in relationships that I really, really, wanted to get out of since I was very little and did not nearly as early as I could have - for little reason other than allegiance to a moral imperative of questionable character.

This is the argument most people outside of FDR or new to FDR get. And it all makes some kind of sense. No one is obligated to stay in a destructive relationship. John, if it was a positive move for you to separate from some or all of your family members, then you'll get nothing but support from me.

But I don't think you're going to be able to reasonably explain away the constant FDR flood of personal chats, books, podcasts, and forum conversations all designed to persuade FDR members that their relationship with their parents was destructive.

Remember, even that is only half the argument. As I have demonstrated, Molyneux believes you should not associate with statists (of any kind) or religious people. It would be dishonorable of you to do so. Well, guess what? Nearly all parents are statists and/or religious!

There are a couple of extraordinarily large smoking guns here that people rarely question. The first is what in the world is going on when a 40+-year-old man keeps having personal "convos" with 17-, 18-year-old kids about their "lousy" parents? Never, ever, ever to suggest ways to repair the relationship but always on how to end it? Is he really a saintly guy just tryin' to help out? Seriously?

The second one is why does no one ever question Molyneux's authority in these or any other matters? I don't mean why don't people question his opinions (some do)--I mean why don't more people question the notion that he is an authoritative voice? When it comes to psychology, he read a few books on psychology and went to therapy once. I strongly suspect that his "theories" are strongly influenced by Alice Miller and pop "recovery" psychologist John Bradshaw. So why are his opinions on psychology considered substantive?

One of the reasons I'm fascinated by him is that he put up a Web site and started knocking out podcasts and a bunch of people got right in line. And yet I can walk into any bar and find someone who is more knowledgeable about raising adolescents than he is. It is truly remarkable. I did write an article about that. It's called The Three Persuasions of Stefan Molyneux. Part of the article is about the FDR constant anti-parent persuasion. But the third persuasion is Stefan Molyneux's ability to persuade people he has a clue about the parent/adolescent relationship. I submit there is absolutely no proof that he does.

...Aaron...XOmniverse...

I see your points and I think to some degree you may be suggesting that I'm stacking the deck or misrepresenting some critics. (I don't think I am) But instead of arguing that point, I'd rather focus on yet another monstrous smoking gun when it comes to Molyneux critics. As I say in my article on Molyneux criticism, there just aren't that many. I included the few I could find. The paucity of serious criticism of Molyneux, pro and contra, speaks volumes.

Molyneux dismisses all contemporary philosophers (including Rand) in comparison to himself. He has released a podcast declaring himself the salvation of philosophy and believes that his book UPB is the cure for the "ethical cancer" that has plagued mankind for centuries. Yet many volumes have been published regarding Rand and objectivism. Despite Molyneux's accomplishments--after scouring the Web--I was able to find only a couple guys on YouTube.

One can talk about Molyneux antagonists all day long, but the biggest antagonist of all is the deafening silence of critical review. Serious philosophers don't think he's worth the time.

If the accusation against Molyneux is one of being a cult leader, I would like to hear how one can attract adolescents into a cult without something being seriously sick about the family relationships beforehand - or is the premise that even healthy adolescents are incapable of judging for themselves?

I rarely have "cult" conversations regarding FDR on-line anymore. They are rarely productive. However, for the record, I have never called Stefan Molyneux a destructive cult leader. I do have an ongoing series on my site that is examining the argument step-by-(painful) step.

Destructive cult groups and Undue Influence groups work in ways that are counter-intuitive. As a result, most people ask reasonably-sounding questions like yours, but your premises are completely wrong. We can't have the conversation until you truly understand destructive cults.

Destructive cults recruit and compete for the same people that Fortune 500 companies do. A cult member is most likely to be highly intelligent, strong-willed, and come from a close-knit family.

Don't go to FactNet or someplace similar and get a list of "10 signs of destructive cults" or whatever. Those lists are easy to judge subjectively. If you're really interested and want to become well-grounded in destructive cults, I'd start by reading "Cults in our Midst" by Margaret Singer. She was the groundbreaking authority on modern day cults and I learned a great deal from that book. I have read several others since then and have talked with two cult extraction experts. I put what I learned in this four-part series: The C Word.

If the accusation against the man is one of holding wrong opinions, I would like to see that separated more cleanly from the ad-hominem.

I agree with that. I'm not sure how to easily answer it. My analysis of Molyneux has been a long, slow journey. Partly because I'm a tedious fact-checker and partly because I'm not the brightest bulb on the tree. Not too long ago, someone on Liberating Minds asked me "where does the "good" Stefan Molyneux end and the "bad" begin?" It's a similar question to yours; i.e., how can we separate the various parts of SM so we don't condemn his thinking because of his behavior?

I gave my usual long-winded answer in this thread (it's the sixth post down).

Finally, I don't think there is ad hom on my site. Sometimes I get snarky in the section I call Quickies!, but I try to stay in bounds. I immediately correct anything that isn't factually accurate.

I don't need ad hom. All I need to do is quote.

Best,

Q.E.

Hi folks....

This conversation may have moved on, so please forgive me if I'm providing useless information. (I do that a lot.) I got several hits from this forum so I checked in to see what the subject was. You clearly have Molyneux figured out, so there's nothing much I can add except the following trivia. This is from the you-can't-tell-the-players-without-a-scorecard dept.:

I went to the profile of that Blog owner (one Edmond Burke)...

That particular blog (MolyneuxRevealed) has a sad story behind it. The owner is a parent, an Ayn Rand fan (who may or may not actually be an objectivist as well; I'm not sure). He was intrigued by Molyneux's early podcasts and--having already introduced his son to Rand--also shared the podcasts with him. Molyneux pretended to be delighted to have father-and-son as fans. He even made a podcast with both of them to prove he was not anti-parent. After the podcast, Molyneux convinced the son to defoo. The son hasn't spoken to a family member for several years.

FDR Liberated...You have to bop around this site a bit to uncover stuff, but there is a "Read Me First" section that helps. I have only skimmed a few things (very superficially), but it appears to be a blog from one of the de-fellowshipped, or de-frocked, or shunned, or excommunicated or whatever term the Freedom Domain Radio organization calls giving a member the boot.

That's me. However, I have never been a member of FDR in any way nor have I ever had contact with Molyneux. Long story short, I started the blog more-or-less by accident. I had no intention of it becoming what it is today. However, it now serves a purpose of helping parents understand what happened to their children as well as encouraging Molyneux's followers to question what they're being told at FDR. It can be very hard to explain what is going on at Molyneux's site, especially if you have to explain libertarianism, anarchocapitalism, et.al., at the same time. For whatever it's worth, one can now simply send interested parties the appropriate links to an article on FDR Liberated. (Yes, I am biased, but I am up front about that and take great pains to ensure my quotes are accurate.)

My main tool is to take what Molyneux and his wife say and do and put it in black-and-white for all to see and evaluate for themselves. I rarely need to do anything more than that.

From bopping around, I found out something else. It appears that the site owner also operates a forum for ex-FDR people. (Fer Keriiiiiiiist sake, couldn't these Molyneux people come up with a better acronym? I feel weird and New Dealish just from typing "FDR"...)

Here's the forum: Liberating Minds :: Welcome :: Welcome to new users

From that page:

... about half of the initial board members including me the administrator used to be or still are members of the FreeDomainRadio Board. Needless to say that we have learnt an awful lot from FDR in general and Stefan Molyneux in particular, but we have become dissatisfied and uncomfortable with the philosophical and psychological direction FDR and Stef are going in, or feel the need for more focused discussions than are possible on the FDR Board (or simply were banned from that board).

I neither operate nor administer that forum in any way. It is operated by a very knowledgeable and kind fellow in Amsterdam who writes under the name Conrad. The quote above made me feel a little nostalgic. It was probably written around 2007 (about a year before I found the forum). At that point in time, Molyneux had decided to operate FreeDomain Radio as his main source of income. He became far less lenient with people who disagreed with him (because his donations depended on having a forum where everyone praised him). Many former members were expelled. They gravitated to Conrad's site for a while and then went their separate ways. Since then, the forum has often been a first stop for people who leave FDR--either through expulsion or of their own accord.

However, since ex-Molyneux fans only want to talk about him for so long, the site very often slows to a crawl.

Molyneux refers to Liberating Minds as a "hate site" and forbids his members to read that forum. In fact, for a while, if you were an FDR member who posted on Liberating Minds you would be expelled and have your IP blocked. In fact, if you even clicked on a link to FDR from Liberating Minds, you ran the risk of an IP block. For that reason, many links from Liberating Minds use HideRefer or NullRefer to ensure the reader doesn't suffer a similar fate.

Here is another site I got from the Burke profile page:

Digital Ethnography – Freedomain Radio: Is Stefan Molyneaux's work ethical?

I just bopped around that site a bit and got lost among the Molyneaux critics and lost souls who are confused. There's also An Essay by Stefan Molyneux, which I quote from below. I decided to check this to make sure it was accurate (heh -- that's a habit you don't see online too much ) and, after some digging, found the original. It seems pretty accurate. Here is the original (written in 2005) from Molyneaux's blog: Are People Just Stupid?

That site is confused because--as best I can tell--it was produced by a couple of college kids (I'm going to guess their names are Stiffler and Kehoe from the URL) for some class project. They cut and pasted a bunch of stuff into WordPress, wrote an article that appears to be germane to the class they were taking and then took off for spring break. It's very sloppy and probably produced in between viewing videos from "Girls Gone Wild in Fort Lauderdale."

I'm a little ticked off that they confused me with cult expert Rick Ross. I have no desire to annoy him--he's a very credible expert and I'm just some guy with a blog. However, repeated requests to the site owners to clean up their site have gone unanswered.

However, the essay you mention (which they cut and pasted from my site) is quite important. I have three articles on my site that I call "The Foundation Series." The first is about that essay, which I believe to be the foundation of FDR. In short, the essay states that people haven't become anarchocapitalists because they were abused by their parents. The "abuse" is parenting without a rational sense of ethics, relying instead on one's belief in the state or religion. Hence, nearly all parents are abusers. (I am not making this up.):

The Foundation of FDR (and yes, I do link to Molyneux's entire essay from this post)

The second article demonstrates that FDR is far more than a Web site; it is a tool specifically designed by Molyneux and his wife to pry adolescents at the point of individuation away from their "evil" families. Few people who inhabit FDR question why nearly all of them just happen to be in their very late teens to mid-twenties:

Prying them Loose

The third article is an introduction to the psychologizing that goes on at FreeDomain Radio, specifically how the works of Alice Miller (a not-very-well-known psychologist within the academic community) are used to convince FDR members that they are abused.

The Rape of Alice Miller

Of course, that just scratches the surface. Inhabit FDR long enough and you'll come to believe that Molyneux himself is the true star in the psychology universe. (Although recently they have become very taken with this guy.) And the tools to convince you that you were abused and really should defoo run very, very deep.

And there you have it. Again, I sincerely apologize if this is TMI.

Best,

Q.E.